Gilmore Sees Warner and Clinton as His Competition

On the eve of the 2006 election, Webb brought Bill Clinton to Alexandria for a rally.

The rally, which was broadcast across the state, attracted several thousand people, ranking it as one of the biggest political rallies in modern Virginia history for a statewide candidate.

Gilmore's strategy of linking Warner to Clinton could be risky in Northern Virginia, a Democratic-leaning area where voters are prone to split tickets.

Many moderate Republicans and independents in Northern Virginia can separate their feelings about Warner, who campaigns as a centrist problem solver, from whatever hostility they might hold for Clinton.

Sen. Jeannemarie Devolites Davis (R-Fairfax) also suggested in October that disenchantment with Hillary Clinton was helping to save her bid for reelection. Devolites Davis lost to Democrat J. Chapman "Chap" Petersen by 10 percentage points.

Gilmore, who trailed Warner by 30 percentage points in The Washington Post poll, needs to find some way to kick-start his campaign. Because Warner is popular in many Republican-leaning areas of southern and western Virginia, Gilmore needs to figure out a way to unify the Republican base if he is going to stand a chance in November. By linking Warner to Clinton, Gilmore is making sure voters know his opponent is a Democrat and he is a Republican.

If Gilmore can turn the Senate contest into a matchup between Republican vs. Democrat, he stands a chance of making the race close, at the very least.

A Republican nominee for a statewide office has not been crushed by a Democrat at the polls since 1989, when former attorney general Mary Sue Terry (D) beat Republican Buster O'Brien by 300,000 votes.

Because it's a presidential year with no incumbent president on the ballot, Warner will be facing a far broader electorate than in his past races. In 2001, when Warner was elected, 46 percent of registered voters showed up to vote. Based on the turnout in the 2004 presidential race, 71 percent, some say as many as three quarters of the electorate could show up to vote next year.

The challenge for Warner becomes how many of these voters are likely to be persuaded by Gilmore's efforts to tie him to Clinton.

Some Republicans argue the electoral outlook in Virginia will look far more appealing for the GOP by next summer, when President Bush is no longer the public face of the party.

If Clinton fares no better than Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) performed in Virginia in the 2004 presidential election, Warner will have to persuade at least 260,000 votes to split their tickets.

Warner should also be concerned that only once since 1964 has Virginia supported a Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in the same year voters were pulling the lever for the Republican presidential nominee.

But the pressure is still on Gilmore to prove his strategy will work.

It will probably take more than Clinton to succeed, but she is a tool few Republicans running in a Southern state would pass over.

And what will Gilmore do if Clinton doesn't win the nomination?